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Asylum

Attorneys: To request an evaluation for your client, please fill out the forensic evaluation request form (pdf) and send to PHR via fax (617.301.4250) or email (asylum [at] phrusa [dot] org).

For more than twenty years, PHR has been at the forefront of protecting the right to live in safety. The Asylum Program’s unique model provides direct service to asylum seekers, advocates for improved conditions in US immigration detention centers, and documents human rights abuses that immigrants suffer in their home countries and in US care.

Asylum Network: Proving Human Rights Abuses

Hundreds of volunteer health professionals in our Asylum Network have helped thousands of survivors of torture and other brutal forms of persecution gain asylum in the US by providing them with medical evaluations to prove they were victims of persecution.

Advocacy: Improving Conditions in US Detention Centers

PHR seeks to protect survivors of persecution by working with federal and state policymakers to elevate the quality and timeliness of health care provided in immigration detention centers, to reduce the overall use of immigration detention, and to eliminate arbitrary and unjustified barriers to attaining humanitarian protection in the US.

Documenting Human Rights Abuses

Asylum seekers face persecution in both their countries of origin and in immigration detention centers. Our goal is to discover those abuses, highlight them, and bring about justice and change.

Examining Asylum Seekers: A Health Professional's Guide to Medical and Psychological Evaluations of Torture

PHR’s manual provides medical professionals with the information necessary to conduct potentially life-saving evaluations. Includes an overview of political asylum law and procedure in the United States, an explanation of the physician's role in verifying signs and symptoms consistent with torture, and a review of components of appropriate written and oral medical testimony.

Fact sheets on Asylum

PHR has written several fact sheets on various aspects of asylum, asylum law, immigration detention, and more. These PDFs made for printing can be found here.

Iran denies medical care to quell dissent (May 9, 2012)

Christy Fujio, Asylum Program Director at PHR, expresses concern in a recent Lancet article at reports emerging from Iran indicating the government is denying medical care to political prisoners. “The Iranian Government wants to break peoples' spirits, they want to set an example”, she said. “They do this overtly through torture, but they also do it more subtly by denying care and allowing people to suffer from their injuries.”

Republican Congressmen Mock Immigration Detention as a ‘Holiday’ for Immigrants (March 29, 2012)

At a Congressional hearing yesterday, Republican committee members attempted to portray immigration detention as a “vacation” for undocumented immigrants. “Nobody who has spent even a minute in an immigration detention facility would characterize it as a ‘holiday,’” said PHR's Christy Fujio “Detention center conditions are often worse a criminal jail. Nobody wants to be there.”

PHR Experts to Speak at Law Conference on Refugee Crises (March 29, 2012)

Still Waiting for Tomorrow: The Law and Politics of Unresolved Refugee Crises (pdf), a conference in Boston that will explore the scope and consequences of global refugee crises as well as potential policy responses to these crises, will feature PHR experts.

We lower ourselves through inhumane practice of solitary confinement (March 19, 2012)

In a Letter to the Editor published by the Boston Globe on March 19, 2012, PHR's Christy Fujio writes: "Like the death penalty, solitary confinement is an inhumane relic that remains only because public opinion demands that we punish wrongdoers and never 'coddle.'"

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ICE Struggles to Provide Humane Treatment to Transgender Detainees (May 21, 2012)

Despite the failure of the US to ensure equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender citizens, LGBT people around the world still see it as a place where they can live their lives freely and openly, without fear of imprisonment or torture.

House Republicans Set the Wrong Priorities for Immigration Detention (May 9, 2012)

The House Appropriations Committee reverses sensible changes in immigration detention policy in the Obama Administration's budget and allocates over half of ICE's budget for detention and removal.

Death on the Border: Questions Raised About Border Patrol Oversight (April 25, 2012)

As onlookers watched from a nearby overpass, a dozen officers from US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) beat and tasered Antastacio Hernandez Rojas until he had a heart attack.

DHS Answers PHR’s Calls for Better Interpretation Services in Detention (April 9, 2012)

For many of the 34,000 immigrants detained each night by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), language is one of the major barriers to accessing services, including urgent medical care, in detention facilities.

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PHR Applauds New Government Guidance on Sexual Orientation Asylum Claims (January 2012)

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) welcomes the release of a new training course for Asylum Officers charged with hearing claims from lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex asylum applicants. Given the increasing volume of people who seek asylum in the US after facing persecution and torture in their home countries because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, this new training course is a sorely-needed resource for government officials who hold the fates of LGBTI asylum applicants in their hands.

New Medical Neutrality Exemption to “Material Support” Bar to Asylum is Applauded (November 2011)

PHR commends Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano’s decision to create an exemption to the “material support” bar for health professionals who have provided medical assistance to wounded combatants. The decision is a major victory for health professionals who were forced to provide health care to alleged terrorists during armed conflict. Previously, medical professionals forced to provide care to members of terrorist organizations, some under the threat of torture or death, were denied asylum in the US.

Punishment Before Justice: Indefinite Detention in the US (June 2011)

The United States government’s reliance on indefinite detention in both national security and immigration contexts reflects an abdication of its legal and moral responsibility to treat those in its custody humanely, as well as an abdication of its responsibility to protect its military and civilians from retaliation on account of its continued refusal to honor the rule of law.

Dual Loyalties (March 2011)

Health professionals who work in the immigration detention system are bound by the same standards of conduct that apply to the treatment of patients in private clinics and hospitals: to treat their duty to patient as their first priority and to always act in the best interests of the patient. However, this duty becomes severely compromised when the interests of their employer intrude upon or directly conflict with the needs of patients.

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Current Work

Dual Loyalties in US Immigration Detention

Health professionals working in the immigration detention system are bound by the same standards of conduct that apply to their treatment of patients in private clinics and hospitals: to treat their duty to patient as their first priority and to always act in the best interests of the patient. However, health professionals’ ability to do this becomes severely compromised when the interests of their employer intrude upon or directly conflict with the needs of patients. Read More »

Related Profiles

Coleen Kivlahan, MD, MSPH

Coleen Kivlahan MD, MSPH

Dr. Kivlahan is a long-time family medicine practitioner, and an Asylum Network volunteer and trainer. She also provides child sexual and physical abuse evaluations, and rape evaluations for women of all ages. Read More »